This is my first experience in legged robots. By making this quadpod robot I wanted to learn how to implement different gaits using servos. I used the same PCB designed for the other project, R/C little-buggy. I am attaching the circuit schematic which has the same micro-controller design as the other porject. Each leg has two degrees of freedom (DOF). I used micro servos (1.7 Kg.cm) and the result is good. However, it could be better if servos were a little stronger.
The controller board Schematic is attached as "quadpod.pdf". I had to change some components and modify the reset circuit of micro controller, though. These changes are not shown in the current version of schematic. Like the project R/C little-buggy, I programmed the robot with CodeVision AVR.
In the video, the robot takes its first steps according to the fastest gait I managed to figure out. :)
Thanks! You are right! They are squeaky. Actually this is my first experience with a legged robot and I just wanted to play with a lot of servos to generate different gaits. So I bought the cheapest micro-servos. But for the future projects like this, I would purchase stronger and better servos.
I saw your quadruped robot’s videos. I think your work is so cool! Your robot has 3DOF per each leg which lets you generate more complicated gaits than mine which has only 2DOF.
The servos I used are not strong enough but I think for the first experience they were good choice. Another problem that I am facing is to manage driving 8 servos by Atmega8. I use a timer interrupted based algorithm to control servos according to the desired gait and at the same time in the main loop of the program I would like to add more features like obstacle avoidance and so forth.
the evolution of my robot , will be to use some sensor too
I think that I’m going to use an ultrasound sensor for the beginning, and as my quadruped walk slowly, the time for the reading of the sensor, the program processing , and a communication with a UART between a SSC32 servo’s control (from Lynxmotion 40€) and a Uadruino Uno; could be faster enough to be reactive… i hope
I love your little bot. I also did one with cheap servos and it runs well with it…ok, one servo is broken now but that’s acceptable when I see how he was treated during his presentations
I like your little quadpod built with the same number of micro servos, too. Unfortunately I couldn’t spend much time and effort to make it as perfect as I planned for at the beginning.
Yep, the same here. I still want to improve the walking, put more sensors on him, program more different behavior but the time to do that all is just not enough. Now I have to replace one servo because Chopstick Junior will go to the next photo shooting next Saturday
